First of all, hello everyone. I did miss you all! Not that I've been far, in reality, as I sadly turned myself into a lurker for the last months (years?), but I did miss participating to the best forum on the Internet. Truth is, work has been very crazy, and private life rich of time consuming events.

Anyway, great to be back

Incredibly enough, I may be giving up and buying an iPod. In addition to that, I may need a car head unit capable to properly control it.

This is only due to the fact that my office moved right into the city center (the busiest part of it!), which means no parking space at all. So, I am now commuting on my motorbike, and after two months of daily commutes, for how shorter they can be, I desperately need to listen to music again.
Not that i hated it, but I never either particularly liked the iPod, I have to admit, but the accessory range in the market is so much wider than that of any other competitor that I am afraid I have no choice. Since I hate to have to separate mp3 file bases, the iPod will need to become the mp3 player in my car as well.

So, I've been serarching quite a bit in the last month, and the only two interesting single-din head units are:

Alpine iDA-X100
Fusion CA-IP500, discussed in this thread.

I could not find anything similar for any other portable mp3 player (zune, or whatever else), so I guess that if I want something like the two units above I have t stick with the iPod. So my first question is: does anybody know of any other head unit + portable mp3 player that can compete with iPOD + one of the above?

Now, I've downloaded the user manuals of both units, and compared them, and while I better prefer the Fusion idea of plugging the iPod inside the headunit itself, it seems to me that the Alpine is much more feature rich: parametric qeualizer, time delay applicable independently to each single speaker, color display, the IMPRINT feature, etch.

So my second question is: does anybody here used the Alpine? I did read a thread about the Alpine a while back, and comments where positive except for the interface: that I expected as that is a replica of the iPod interface, absolutely limited compared to the Empeg's, but I guess I have to give up to that.
But, How fast is it?

Did anybody try the Fusion? I am guessing not, looking at this thread... But, if any news are there, how did you like it?

Thank you all in advance, as usual.